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It was an unprecedented mission. On November 1, 2006, three men set out to run across the entire Sahara Desert—roughly two marathons, ending 111 exhausting days later on February 20, 2007. The expedition of over 4,000 miles took American Charlie Engle, Canadian Ray Zahab, and Taiwanese Kevin Lin through six African countries: Senegal, Mauritania, Mali, Niger, Libya, and Egypt—from the Atlantic Ocean to the Red Sea.
Along the way, the runners encountered striking natural beauty, harsh living conditions, and the cheers of village children who ran alongside them. They also encountered the realities of the water crisis in Africa. Water is one of the world’s most vital resources. But according to the international non-profit organization WaterAid, roughly 20 percent of the world’s population, or an estimated 1.1 billion people, lack access to clean water. Engle, Zahib, and Lin determined to use their expedition to raise both awareness and money to aid in the suffering that they witnessed first-hand.
A film crew accompanied the runners to document the expedition for a feature film entitled Running the Sahara, narrated by Academy Award® winner Matt Damon and directed by Academy Award winner James Moll. And with limited or no availability of terrestrial telecom facilities, the entire expedition relied on Inmarsat’s Broadband Global Area Network (BGAN) satellite service and the Hughes 9201 BGAN terminal to handle the endless communication of logistical details, diplomatic arrangements between countries, medical data, and other critical information.
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“Communications in the desert was so critical to both the expedition and the film production team that the Hughes 9201 BGAN terminal was the first thing we set up when reaching camp and the last thing we took down before moving on,” said Larry Tanz, producer of Running the Sahara and former CEO of LivePlanet. “And it was an unexpected luxury during this physically and emotionally demanding shoot for the runners and the crew to be able to access email, send photos, and feel connected with the people back home.”
The size of a laptop computer and fitting easily into a small backpack, the Hughes 9201 delivers high-speed data and voice communications over Inmarsat’s global BGAN network, which covers more than 85 percent of the earth’s surface, including some of its most remote areas. Designed to withstand extreme weather conditions for extended periods of time, the Hughes 9201 provided a communications lifeline throughout the hot, grueling desert mission.
Its small size and weight made the Hughes 9201 easy to move from site to site and be connected again as a Wi-Fi hotspot within minutes. One evening, members used it to access Google™ Earth to find several lost vehicles and direct them safely to camp.
“The LivePlanet production team faced a huge logistical challenge in supporting the entire expedition as it traveled through the Sahara desert,” said Frank August, Inmarsat’s director of business development for North America. “We at Inmarsat were very happy to help by providing BGAN service for critical Internet connectivity and to sponsor this epic event—an amazing accomplishment for the runners and a call to action to bring clean water to Africa.”
“You get a sense of the vastness of this project when you consider that during the first half of the expedition, the crew pointed the Hughes 9201 terminal to a satellite in the eastern sky, then during the second half, pointed to a different satellite in the western sky,” said Graham Avis, vice president of the Hughes Mobile Satellite Terminal Group. “We are proud that during this epic journey, the Hughes BGAN satellite terminal provided critical communications where other communications simply weren’t available.”
Besides important social initiatives like Running the Sahara, the Hughes 9201 and the Inmarsat BGAN service are also being used to meet today’s soaring demand for portable communications for a whole host of applications, including media broadcast, support of disaster relief, and telemedicine. And thanks to the efforts of Engle, Zahab, and Lin, and the many people and organizations supporting their exciting project, we may be closer to the day when sustainable programs bring clean water to people everywhere.
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